27 November 2006

...and the Pilot Precise V5 you wrote in on.

Am I the only person out there who has never heard of the word RELATABLE as a literary term? Why do my students keep using this, and what does it really mean?

Sounds like a good name for a novella.

It's strange returning after the four day weekend. My ipod was like a foreign thing in my hand on the way to campus this morning. My inbox brimming. I guess that's what happens when you don't check email every five minutes.

6 comments:

I might as well begin by saying how much I like the title.It gets me right away because I’m in a workshop nowso immediately the poem has my attention,like the ancient mariner grabbing me by the sleeve.

And I like the first couple of stanzas,the way they establish this mode of self-pointingthat runs through the whole poemand tells us that words are food thrown downon the ground for other words to eat.

I can almost taste the tail of the snakein its own mouth,if you know what I mean.

But what I’m not sure about is the voicewhich sounds in places very casual, very blue jeans,but other times seems standoffish,professorial in the worst sense of the wordlike the poem is blowing pipe smoke in my face.But maybe that’s just what it wants to do.

What I did find engaging were the middle stanzas,especially the fourth one.I like the image of clouds flying like lozengeswhich gives me a very clear picture.And I really like how this drawbridge operatorjust appears out of the bluewith his feet up on the iron railingand his fishing pole jigging “I like jigging”a hook in the slow industrial canal below.I love slow industrial canal below. All those I’s.

Maybe it’s just me,but the next stanza is where I start to have a problem.I mean how can the evening bump into the stars?And what’s an obbligato of snow?Also, I roam the decaffeinated streets.At that point I’m lost. I need help.

The other thing that throws me off,and maybe this is just me,is the way the scene keeps shifting around.First, we’re in this big aerodromeand the speaker is inspecting a row of dirigibles,which makes me think this could be a dream.Then he takes us into his garden,the part with the dahlias and the coiling hose,though that’s nice, the coiling hose,but then I’m not sure where we’re supposed to be.The rain and the mint green light,that makes it feel outdoors, but what about this wallpaper?Or is it a kind of indoor cemetery?There’s something about death going on here.

In fact, I start to wonder if what we have hereis really two poems, or three, or four,or possibly none.

But then there’s this last stanza, my favorite.This is were the poem wins me back,especially the lines spoken in the voice of the mouse.I mean we’ve all seen these images in cartoons before,but I still love the details he useswhen he’s describing where he lives.The perfect little arch of an entrance in the baseboard,the bed made out of a curled-back sardine can,the spool of thread for a table.I start thinking about how hard the mouse had to worknight after night collecting all these thingswhile the people in the house were fast asleep,and that gives me a very strong feeling,a very powerful sense of something.But I don’t know if anyone else was feeling that.Maybe that was just me.Maybe that’s just the way I read it.

BTW---When I was in college and the VA was paying for EVERYTHING, one of my guilty pleasures was buying box after box of the V5 pens. For a time, having those free pens was a wonderful boon.

Yeah for V5's as gifts! (Thanks again) and also, thank God I'm not the only one wondering where that f*&%ing word came from. I guess, if I am able to relate to something, then something must be relate-able, right?

About me.

I live in glorious Akron, Ohio, where I write poems, edit the Akron Series in Poetry, and teach literature and creative writing. I am the author of five full-length collections of poems, including A Sunny Place with Adequate Water, Small Enterprise, and the collaborative poetry collection The Czar, with Jay Robinson (all from Black Lawrence Press). I've received an NEA fellowship in poetry, and several individual excellence awards from the Ohio Arts Council. In 2019 my first collection of prose poems, Partial Genius, is due to drop from BLP.
In my spare time, I like to photograph garbage.